Sunday, 29 January 2017

A wintery weekend for an intro to winter climbing.

I was working an intro to climbing course this weekend for Hebridean Pursuits with a group from the Manchester University MC. It has been a great weekend of climbing and very sociable too with two other climbing groups out. We were in Stob Coire nan Lochan on Saturday and climbed Broad gully, along with most other teams and today we climbed Ledge route. The guys have come on leaps and bounds and I wish them luck with there future climbing.

A few inches of fresh snow fell overnight Friday and into Saturday, enough to make the mountains look and feel wintery. This snow is mostly just sat on rock or grass at the moment which means there is a lot of loose rock, care is needed but there is climbing to be done. The steeper crags didn't really look white today and most parties were in the larger gully lines or ridges. Teams have been climbing on the East face of Aonach Mor and reporting good conditions. Hopefully the coming freeze/thaws that are forecast will improve things a bit. Winter is out there and there are routes to climb as long as you have an open mind at the moment.